


what remains

by na_scathach



Series: valgrace week 2020 [4]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo) Spoilers, didn't have a plan BTW, doesn't matter that's the way Leo sees it, just like. wrote this in a Bad Mood. so please don't be too harsh, or is it???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/na_scathach/pseuds/na_scathach
Summary: leo's always had a good memory
Relationships: Jason Grace/Leo Valdez
Series: valgrace week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810756
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41
Collections: 2020 Valgrace Week





	what remains

**Author's Note:**

> guten tag (nacht?) people. day...four?. honestly wrote this in an hour and I'm currently not Feeling It so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. also this one has a panic-attack described and a character Going Through It in terms of grief, so, once again, if you feel you aren't in the right headspace for that, no hard feelings if you skip! 
> 
> title comes from: me! i thought of it.

Leo’s always had a good memory. 

He can recall what people have said months after the fact, remember the way someone acted strangely on a particular Sunday afternoon. He can remember entire conversations and pieces of useless information he’s picked up off of Jeopardy. He remembers the exact texture of his mom’s favorite jacket and the feeling of her calloused hand dancing through his curls. 

Leo remembers a lot. 

Wilderness fucks with that. 

Because on one hand, he remembers all of Wilderness. Him getting picked up in New Mexico, the court deciding he probably wouldn’t survive in Juvie, the stale, pine smell of the social worker’s car that drove him to Wilderness, the way the school stood out in Nevada’s neon blue sky and vast plains of nothingness. He remembers getting his room and his roommate (or was there a roommate at all?) Jason Grace. He remembers Piper McLean and how close they all got, so quickly, even though Leo was used to keeping his distance, keeping people at arms-length because people were cruel and impossible and Leo preferred not to be hurt, thankyouverymuch. 

On the other, they’re fake. False. Jason was never his roommate and Piper and Jason were never a couple and there was never a PiperLeoJason at Wilderness. 

Leo remembers fake fucking memories in perfect clarity. 

Leo doesn’t know if it’s eidetic or photographic or whatever, but he’s never bothered to give it a name. And it doesn’t work well with reading, mostly things Leo’s heard and felt. So Leo can remember the feeling of his childhood bed under his legs and the TV playing lowly through their apartment, but he can’t tell someone the first thing about what happened in their last Lit class. 

It’s a bitch, to be honest. 

He rubs at his eyes and bites down on the urge to scream.

Leo has an elephant’s memory and so, he remembers Jason Grace like he was the last face Leo ever saw. 

Jason, obviously, was pretty handsome. Blond, blue-eyed, pale- he had the whole All-American white boy thing going on. At first, that put Leo off him. Dude looked like he was ripped straight from an Ivy Leauge college brochure. And then he opened his mouth. 

Jason Grace was kind, and weird, and really, really awkward, though he tried to cover it up. He was straight-laced until Piper or Leo convinced him to let loose a few times. He was considerate and loyal and a good fucking person. A rarity, in Leo’s life. Sure, he was raised by wolves and he didn’t really get the mortal world, but who gave a fuck, because he was Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, and Leo’s  _ best friend. _

Another downside to Leo’s never-ending, black hole of a memory, is he can remember seeing Jason dead. 

It’s burned onto his corneas and always on the tip of his tongue, breathing down his neck, waiting for Leo’s mind to wander so it can dig its way out of Leo’s  _ DO NOT TOUCH: BAD MEMORIES  _ box and dig its venomous fangs into Leo’s eyes. It’s always there, waiting, watching. The other memories wait in line too, but Leo’s been dealing with them for years, so he knows how to dance and hide the knee-jerk reactions that come up at their shadow. 

But Jason is- different. New. New and old and Leo never dealt with it until it was too late. Couldn’t handle the fact that he was gone, that he had been  _ murdered  _ before Leo could even say  _ hey, I’m back.  _ He didn’t even go to the funeral, couldn’t handle it, shit, he still can’t. He ran from his problems, big surprise there, but this time, no matter how much distance he put between him and what remained of Jason Grace, it was like Leo was still there, asking where Jason was-

He drops his pen against the desk and grips his shaking hands in each other, bowing his back. 

Leo got his GED because he had nothing better to do and Piper was getting hers, so Leo just tagged along, and Leo only accepted that place in MIT because he had nothing better to do than lay in his bed and wonder-

It’s not doing Leo any favors that he can’t function like a normal human being anymore. Sure, it was bad when he was 15, 16, but after Jason, shit just went to hell in a handbasket. 

His own memories are acting as his biggest enemy and Leo wants to go  _ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  _ on himself. Though with less romance, definitely less Jim Carey and more Leo not remember who he is. Blank Slate. Can’t be traumatized if you don’t know your name!

All these funny thoughts are doing nothing to stave off Leo’s mid-afternoon scheduled panic-attack.

He drops his head against the desk in his dorm, thankful that...Mark...Micheal...Martin...something like that isn’t here. His eyes squeeze shut against the dam of memories, vivid and painful and clawing like wild beasts, that threaten to spill through. He can’t handle that right now. Can’t deal, won’t deal, calm down you neurotic fuck-

He takes several desperate gulps of air, hands buried in his hair and pulling tight, tightly, tighter, on his curls, nails digging into his scalp. He wants to crawl into a ball so small he disappears and then it’ll be dark and warm and fine and Leo won’t have to deal with his snowballing mental health. Leo’s never had the best mental health, but he’s so sure, in the same way, he’s sure that a machine will work or that car has a fucked belt, that if Jason was still here, it would be so, so much better. 

Another downside to his magic memory:

Leo remembers what it’s like to be in love with Jason Grace so clearly that it makes Leo’s heart twist and ache-

Leo doesn’t think he’ll love anyone the way he love(d) Jason Grace. Leo killed Gaia so Jason wouldn’t have to, devised a whole plan so Jason would be okay and Leo comes back to find him dead-

He’s pulling at his hair so hard it’s beginning to burn and ache, but that’s two emotions Leo is used to feeling. The pain is centering, anyways. Grounding, pulling him into the present. The desk is cool against his boiling skin but the panic and the grief is too big and it’s screaming, like a petulant child,  _ pay attention to me!  _ and Leo can only obey-

Leo wants to scream and fucking destroy because when Jason died he took a bit of Leo and Piper with him, all the way down to the underworld and now Leo feels permanently empty, half-built, missing something vital and Leo hates it, hates it, hates it-

It’ll always be like this, won’t it? The feeling of missing something, that grief that follows you like a dead body stapled to your back, pushing you down, a constant reminder, and somedays you’ll not think about it, but then you’ll be left alone with your thoughts and you’ll think ‘ _ what if- _ ’ and suddenly everything is a ‘ _ what if- _ ’ because you want them to be there so badly, but they can’t, and they never will be, so you’re left sitting there, like an idiot crying your eyes out because you had the audacity to  _ remember- _

And sometimes, you’ll make yourself think about it for days, because you have to. Grief is your burden to carry, right? And it  _ should _ hurt and Leo likes the roaring void of pain that sparks inside him every time he makes himself look at pictures or remember good times. He’s still alive, and it’s the curse of the living to remember the dead. It’s the blessing of the dead to forget the living. But Leo’s still here, kicking and screaming and lost and so it’s up to him to hate and burn in Jason’s memory. He’s gotta remember Jason, he has to. Has to remember his dumb, brave, weirdo best-friend because Leo cheated death and Jason paid the price-

Leo’s crying now, and that’s a common sentence nowadays. Salt rushes into his mouth and he bites his lip to tide back the sobs and fucking screams of anguish because Leo isn’t coping, and he can’t, not when he still loves the memory of someone who would never love him back. 

Leo’s been damned by his own memory and his own inability to fall in love with the right people. So, here he sits, bent in half, head on his desk, sobbing in his dorm room at MIT because Leo Valdez has an elephant’s memory and the curse of watching everything he cares about crash and burn. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is [thelosttrio](https://thelosttrio.tumblr.com/)


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